Darawank 2012 wk 1

January 31^st, We left Parklea early this morning, so that we could make a detour into Salamander Bay, to pick up a few items from our storage shed. As we were driving along Nelson Bay Road, just approaching the Airport turn-off, a car pulled alongside me and was frantically waving his arms. I wound down my window and he said “your’ve lost a tyre off your Van”, so “thanks mate” and turned left into the road leading to the Airport and pulled to the side of the road. I’m wondering how the spare tyre could have come loose off the back of the Van. It had started to rain, so grabbed my little car umbrella and went to investigate. As I passed the spare tyre it was intact, no problem, so went to the left side of the Van to find that the front tyre was completely shredded and all that was left was the 2 walls with the rim sitting on the ground. This looked like a roadside service job (I thought), so rang the FORD Roadside Service number only to be told that my service does not cover the Van (Bummer). Fortunately, the rain had stopped and after moving some gear around the back of the Territory, I was able to get the trusty Ford jack out and just work it under the axle of the Van. It was hard going as I could only get a ¼ turn on the jack screw and in the flat position these jacks are pretty useless anyway, as you don’t get much mechanical advantage until it gets a bit of height. It is not the right jack to be lifting an 18ft Caravan. The progress was so slow that my next “bright idea” was to dig under where the tyre had to go, so that I didn’t need to jack the axle up so far. Seeing all my digging implements were in the storage shed, the best I could find was a paint scraper from my toolbox. I scraped away as much gravel as I could, but I still needed more height. A young fellow pulled up asked if I needed some help. He was on his way to the Airport to pick up some workmates and was early, so had plenty of time to spare. He quickly had the axle high enough to take the spare tyre, but when I tried to fit the spare it wouldn’t go, as the wheel arch opening is small. My next “bright idea” was to use the jack from his car to raise the body of the Van. This worked and with Spare in place and jack out, I thanked my helper and we both continued on our way. We had wasted a whole hour just changing a tyre! We stopped and Saxby’s Pie Shop for a clean up, some lunch and to put air into the tyres, at the ajoining Service Station. We carried on to the shed and were on our way, one hour later, with the items we wanted and travelled through heavy rain to reach Wallamba River Holiday Park at Darawank, just after 5pm. We didn’t know but they shut the Office at 5pm and as we drove in the front gate they rang us to see if we were still coming. The river was rising and the riverfront site that we booked was under water, so it took another ½ hour to find a site that we could use for our 3 week stay, without having to move. When I drove to the site we agreed on , it didn’t have a slab and the ground was mush, so I pulled onto the site next door (with a slab) and did a minimum set up to do us for the night.

February 1^st, Still raining and the River continuing to rise. The Manager came down this morning and said he would have done the same thing himself and we could have the slab site for our whole stay.

February 2^nd, Still raining and windy. After breakfast I noticed that our roll out awning had ripped away from the roller during the night. The rain finally eased off to showers in the afternoon so I rang NRMA Insurance and lodged a claim to replace the Awning and took some photos to go with the quote.

February 3^rd, Rain was gone today, we met our tourist neighbours ( total of 6 including ourselves) and we all had a fish off the riverfront boardwalk. They caught 5 bream and I caught 2, one was a keeper. We were all catching Eels, the river is full of them.

February 4^th, Val transplanted her carrot and spinach seedlings out into foam boxes while I got the boat off the car, set up and into the river. This is a big waterskiing river so I was glad they have a Lagoon coming off the river, where our tinny can be tied up. After dinner we fished off the boardwalk and I caught a 31cm bream around 9pm, when the tide started to run out.

February 5^th, We had another Caravan arrive today, on the site next to us, and after intro’s, found out that Wayne was a keen fisherman. I took the boat out today and found a channel off the river, away from the water skiers, but could not catch a keeper. There is still a lot of rubbish in the water from the floods.

February 6^th, I took Wayne out for a fish, in the tinny, and we found a spot in the River where the fish were biting. I caught a 42cm flathead and a 35cm bream, so was happy to come in for a late lunch at 2pm.